ROCHESTER — Flipping through photos on his iPhone, Don McCullough turned his head and asked, “Do you know what that is?”

He showed a small photo of sand around a blackened silver top that almost looked like a car part embedded in a beach.

“That's a fire hydrant,” he said.

Less than 24 hours since his return home to the Garrison City from Staten Island and Queens, two of the worst hit locales by Superstorm Sandy, McCullough was full of stories with imagery unfathomable, such as incoming ocean waves that poured saltwater through a community so vigorously it packed sand around roads like freshly fallen snow, inches upon inches deep.

“Everybody was so affected but we saw neighborhoods that were, let's just say, more devastated than other neighborhoods,” the Rochester Fire Department said. “There were cars that were moved around like toys by the storm surge. Being all salt water, the homes were totaled. The homes, all the homes, were filled with water up to the first floor still. And the people, the residents, were walking around assessing the damage in a state of shock.”

As a third-generation firefighter and a writer, McCullough said the fire service industry has a long history in oral storytelling. But what he witnessed last week in the New York City area was unparalleled to anything he had seen or spoken of before.

“We would go by a home that had burned to the ground because (local firefighters) couldn't even get to the house,” he said. “… I personally had not seen anything of that magnitude, ever. I spent about a year and a half at the World Trade Center after the (Sept. 11, 2001) impact, in a volunteer capacity … but that damage was very localized. I had never witnessed such a widespread devastation in my entire career.”

McCullough, who started out with the Dover Fire Department in 1984 and moved to the Rochester department in 1998, said he joined Beverly, Massachusetts' Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) team in 2003, because of the 9-11 attacks. He said he wanted to help others. USAR is a part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and involves the location, rescue, or extrication, and initial medical stabilization of victims trapped in confined spaces, according to the agency's website.

Reflecting on New York City, in the wake of a “superstorm” that combined a hurricanelike weather pattern with a nor'easter just before Halloween, McCullough thinks of what he saw as a “war zone,” comparable to the effects felt after Hurricane Katrina hit the South. The death toll is rising, to include approximately 50 fatalities in the New York area, and tens of thousands remain without a home, power or heat in advance of cold November weather coming on.

Lt. Chris Jacques of the Dover Fire Department deployed to the same area with McCullough and the USAR team. He said during their approximate five- to seven-day long deployment, about 150 USAR firefighters from all over the country, along with the famous New York Fire Department (NYFD), went door to door through urban neighborhoods, seeking to determine whether anyone was still home, trapped or deceased.

“That's one of the biggest things I saw down there, doing our door to door searches, is how those people came together,” Jacques said. “We'd get into one area and you'd talk to somebody, I'd reach out to somebody, and start asking them and they would know their whole neighborhood.”

The USAR men, and women, patrolled communities in the Broad Channel in Queens, Staten Island, the Rockaways and the Great Kills.

“There are some pretty tight-knit neighborhoods, watching out for each other,” Jacques continued. “They know who stayed and who left for the most part. It was a good accountability for the most part.”

He noted while much of the looting in the city has been publicized, he wished to stress that he only saw people caring for one another. Both Jacques and McCullough said they remembered a woman who had lost her home, but still hooked up a generator in the back of her minivan to brew coffee on several machines for all the rescue workers. With some areas of New York and New Jersey still without power, with lines for gas stations miles long, McCullough said she was handing out sandwiches and thanking the crews for their efforts.

“I can't begin to tell you how impressed I was with the people of New York,” McCullough said.

He added while the men worked in the Rockaways and the Far Rockaways, close to Breezy Point where a reported 80 to 100 homes burned to the ground in a small beachside community, the USAR team never made it over.

“The NYFD wanted to handle that on their own,” he explained, noting many city employees, and even firefighters, lived there.

Jacques said he met a local firefighter who even after losing his home, continued with the search and structural collapse mission. Both men said upon returning home to New Hampshire, they were grateful to be with their families, and to know their community in Dover was minimally affected by the storm.

“I was thinking about my wife that I had left behind during the storm. I was thinking of my brother and sister firefighters in Rochester,” McCullough said, seated next to his wife, Kristin on the couch in their living room.

“I was definitely getting more sleep-deprived as the days wore on. Sometimes texts didn't go through,” she said. “Our conversations were brief. I mean, he could tell me 'I'm safe.' But I had a lot of neighbors checking in on me. Without my anchor, I felt very, sort of, adrift.”

Jacques said he was thankful upon returning home, Dover had moved its Halloween trick-or-treating date to the weekend before the storm struck, which left time for him to accompany his young children for the holiday.

“Thank God Dover pushed that off until Saturday,” he said, with a laugh. “I got to spend a couple of days with my kids. I just truly appreciate how lucky we are that we got to ride this one out and it wasn't affected here like down there.”

McCullough said he fears the recovery efforts in New York and New Jersey will take years, but said he would return in a heartbeat, adding he feels like his job isn't done and processing the last week has been overwhelming.

“That's part of the processing, (coming back to Rochester). You come back home to a state of normalcy but your heart and mind is still very much there and that just takes, you know, that time an individual needs to process and come back to a state of equilibrium,” he said. “They were talking about doing some humanitarian missions down there … You can't say no to people in need.”

Also assisting from the Seacoast region was Portsmouth firefighter Shawn Wheeler.

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Courtesy photo by Don McCullough
A snapshot of a neighborhood in Staten Island, slammed after Superstorm Sandy struck last week.

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Courtesy photo by Don McCullough
A snapshot of a neighborhood in Staten Island, slammed after Superstorm Sandy struck last week. Many of the trash bags shown are from the cleanup efforts of local volunteers and residence affected.

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Courtesy photo by Don McCullough
A snapshot of a neighborhood in Staten Island, slammed after Superstorm Sandy struck last week. Electric and utility poles can be seen here tilting after they were struck by strong winds and the storm surge.

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Courtesy photo by Don McCullough
A snapshot of a neighborhood in Staten Island, slammed after Superstorm Sandy struck last week. More garbage, insulation and brush put out the curb by those cleaning up the afflicted area.

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Courtesy photo by Don McCullough
The streets in Staten Island after a storm surge swept through this neighborhood. Members of the Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) team worked to recover the area last week.

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Courtesy photo by Don McCullough
A snapshot of a neighborhood in Staten Island, slammed after Superstorm Sandy struck last week. This was in a beachside community, and shows some sidewalk cement pieces and a fire hydrant uprooted during the storm surge.

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Courtesy photo by Don McCullough
From left, Dover Fire Lt. Chris Jacques, Rochester Fire Capt. Don McCullough, and Portsmouth firefighter Shawn Wheeler stand together for a photograph amid their recovery efforts in New York City with the Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) team from Beverly, Mass.